Senate breaks impasse on jobless aid, road funding

Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. heads for the weekly caucus lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 2, 2010. Bunning has again blocked the U.S. Senate from extending unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

/ AP

Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. heads for the weekly caucus lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 2, 2010. Bunning has again blocked the U.S. Senate from extending unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. heads for the weekly caucus lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 2, 2010. Bunning has again blocked the U.S. Senate from extending unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg) (/ AP)

ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

A senator who had been single-handedly holding up stopgap legislation to extend help for the jobless and keep federal highway dollars flowing has finally relented.

A spokesman for Sen. Jim Bunning says the Kentucky Republican will permit a vote Tuesday evening on the measure. That means hundreds of thousands of unemployed people would no longer face the loss of more generous unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies.

Bunning has been holding up a vote for days seeking to find ways to finance the $10 billion measure but relented in the face of withering Democratic attacks and dwindling support within his own party.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats ramped up the political pressure Tuesday on a Republican stubbornly blocking a stopgap measure to extend help for the jobless and keep federal highway dollars flowing.

But an impasse involving Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky that has caused federal furloughs and threatens the unemployment benefits of hundreds of thousands of people continues, even as GOP leaders pressed for a graceful exit from the unexpected political tempest - which has subjected Republicans to withering media coverage and cost the party politically.

Democrats used to being on the defensive over health care and the deficit were not in a compromising mood, signaling that they largely want the irascible Bunning to surrender rather than agree to a set of votes on ways to defray the $10 billion cost of the measure. It seemed increasingly likely that Bunning would relent.

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell - who has a strained relationship with his homestate colleague - said that he is working with Democrats to set up a vote to pass the legislation, which has been single-handedly held up by Bunning despite virtually unanimous support from the other 99 senators.

"We're going to be able to work out the short-term extension in the very near future and we're in the process of working on that now," McConnell said.

A law that provided stopgap road funding and longer and more generous unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless expired Monday. Without the extension, about 200,000 jobless people could lose federal benefits this week alone, according to the liberal-leaning National Employment Law Project.

Earlier on Tuesday, Bunning objected to a request by Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a fellow Republican, to pass a 30-day extension of jobless benefits and other expired measures.

When asked Tuesday if Bunning was hurting the Republican Party, Collins said, "He's hurting the American people."

Bunning has been blocking the stopgap legislation since Thursday, which is frustrating Republicans like Collins. She said some 500 people from her state alone would lose their unemployment benefits this week, while doctors will soon have to absorb a 21 percent cut in their Medicare reimbursements.

Frustrated Democrats have been lobbing criticism at Bunning and his fellow Republicans for days. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., implored Bunning to relent and allow a vote.

Reid said that Republicans are pressing him for four votes related to the measure and ways to pay for it without increasing the deficit. Bunning wants to use leftover money from last year's stimulus measure, among other options.

Reid said, however, that he's willing to grant Bunning one vote. Democrats don't want to be exposed to potentially difficult votes - even if it would lead to immediate passage of a measure that they say is so vital to the jobless.

It is probably no coincidence that the Democrats' hardball tactics are coming as they are reaping political gains by attacking Bunning and his fellow Republicans. Major cable news networks carried Tuesday morning's proceedings live and returning to the topic frequently.

Democrat after Democrat came to the floor Tuesday to attack Republicans for blocking the legislation.

"Today we have a clear cut example to show the American people just what's wrong with Washington, D.C.," Murray said. "That is because today one single Republican senator is standing in the way of the unemployment benefits of 400,000 Americans."

The Transportation Department says that 2,000 agency workers have been furloughed with the lapse of highway funding. They're likely to be awarded back pay once the program is revived.

Democrats want to pass the measure with the unanimous permission of all senators, a common tactic to speed noncontroversial measures through the notoriously balky Senate. Otherwise it could take almost a week to slog through the procedural steps required to take up the measure and defeat Bunning's filibuster.

Meanwhile, Reid has called up a $100-billion-plus measure to provide a longer-term extension of unemployment benefits that would last through the end of the year, along with a full-year extension of higher Medicare payments to doctors, help for states with their Medicaid budgets and a continuing a variety of expired tax breaks for individuals and businesses.